There’s not much what-if here and certainly no indecision. Instead, as if rallying the troops, Sanders writes confidently of...
A dark horse speaks, advancing, after the fact, “an agenda for a new America.”
Leave it to Sanders to be contrary: most politicos, Trump included, write their campaign books while still campaigning. We can only imagine the author believes that his efforts will be ongoing and continual; in that interest, this book capably captures the main points of his message: Washington is corrupt, money needs to be taken out of politics, and the working class needs a fair shake and, yes, a new deal. Sanders begins on a note that could only have come after the race, of course: namely, that nearly 1.5 million people attended his rallies, and his campaign “attracted the energetic support of hundreds of thousands of volunteers in every state in the country.” Here, the author, writing very much as he speaks (“Fortunately, we won that battle,” he says of a Republican effort to cut aid to disabled veterans, “but it sickens me that we even had to wage the fight”), takes a long look at some of the planks that he and his movement pressed onto the Democratic Party platform in the 2016 election, including immigration reform, the $15-per-hour federal minimum wage, and the breakup of banks too big to fail. In the place of any regrets comes plenty of fire and a little ire, as when he impatiently recalls what he considers to be Hillary Clinton’s mischaracterization of his position on guns. “This was an unfair attack,” he writes, “but one that I didn’t handle well.” He adds, “to suggest, as Clinton did, that I was somehow sympathetic to the gun lobby was absurd.” Most of the author’s scorn is reserved, though, for those who stand in the way of his common-sense if sometimes-technical recommendations on such matters as capital gains taxation, Medicare expansion, and infrastructure spending.
There’s not much what-if here and certainly no indecision. Instead, as if rallying the troops, Sanders writes confidently of a program that’s sure to be revisited in 2020.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-13292-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2016
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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BOOK REVIEW
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